Lit 4: The Modern Era

The tricky part of creating a syllabus for the late 19th and 20th centuries is deciding what to leave out. There's so much to read and so little time, but this is an amazing course with a stunning and challenging syllabus. It's perfect for the literary-minded high school junior or senior.

David Copperfield, our first novel, was the favorite and most autobiographical of all Dickens's books. Whitman's ground-breaking poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, is next. Then we push through some of the greatest novels ever written: Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment, Hardy's Return of the Native, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. We look at the poetry of the Modernists and some short stories by Kafka, O'Connor, and Hemingway. We dip our toes into some Faulkner (warning: he's hard to read!) and read Orwell's political allegory Animal Farm. We cover classic high school texts The Old Man and Sea and Lord of the Flies, and finish up with the two well-loved recent works: C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce and the 21st century novel (and universal student favorite), Peace Like a River.

For 2018-19, this class meets live on Tuesdays from 12:30-1:30 PM, Eastern Time. All sessions will be recorded and made available to enrolled students.